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Mustafa Amin, Liberal Editor Jailed by Nasser, Dies at 83

Mustafa Amin, a pioneer of Arab journalism and an advocate of Western-style democracy who was imprisoned under President Gamal Abdel Nasser, died at his home in Cairo on Sunday. He was 83.

Mr. Amin and his twin brother, Ali, were publishers of Egypt's five best-selling publications until Nasser nationalized the country's press in 1960.

The brothers continued writing in the daily newspaper Al Akhbar and the weekly Akhbar Al Youm, where Mustafa Amin stood out in calling for closer ties to the United States, as a bastion of freedom and democracy. Coming at a time when the Nasser Government was becoming friendly with the Soviet Union, neither that message nor Mr. Amin's criticism of Communism were well-received in official circles.

In 1965, while lunching at his villa in Alexandria with an American diplomat, Bruce Taylor Odell, Mr. Amin was arrested and charged with being an American spy. After a secret trial in which prosecutors demanded that Mr. Amin be put to death, Mr. Amin was sentenced to prison, and remained behind bars until 1974. He was then freed, ostensibly on the grounds of poor health, by President Anwar al-Sadat, who after succeeding Mr. Nasser in 1970 pursued friendlier ties with the West.

Mr. Amin became editor of Akhbar Al Youm, and upon the death of his brother in 1976 took over a daily column known as ''An Idea,'' which was published in Al Akhbar and in a London-based Arabic newspaper, Asharq Al Awsat.

Born in Cairo in 1914, Mr. Amin was educated at the American University in Cairo and at Georgetown University in Washington, and grew accustomed from early in his career to being under fire for showing sympathy to Western liberalism, free enterprise and a free press.

He was first jailed in 1939 for an article that criticized King Farouk, and was jailed for two brief occasions in the early days of Nasser's Government in the 1950's. Nevertheless Mr. Amin produced spicy, lively journalism that continued to gently peck at those in power.

His relations with Nasser were not always poor. In 1956 the President sent Mr. Amin to Washington to show American officials photographs and other evidence of the destruction caused by the joint British, French and Israeli invasion that followed Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal.

Mr. Amin and his brother helped to school a generation of Egyptian journalists. He wrote four books about his experience in jail, including a popular autobiography that described how he was tortured.

Having spent nine years in prison, he devoted many of his columns to promoting the ideal of freedom, which he said would transform Egypt into a stronger country and make its people more creative.

Mr. Amin is also known for adding a human dimension to Egyptian journalism. Early in his career he helped to popularize the establishment of a Mother's Day, and he later began a monthly appeal in the pages of Al Akhbar for donations to help students, the handicapped and the needy.

He is survived by his wife, Isis Tantawi; his daughter, Safia, and a granddaughter.